A Return to Blue Dress Park

An online journal about visual art, the urban landscape and design. Mary Louise Schumacher, the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic, leads the discussion and a community of writers contribute to the dialogue.

Such a sad, uninteresting patch of concrete, thought artist Paul Druecke, as he passed a triangular slab at the corner of Reservoir and Holton streets. It's easy to miss, blank, he thought. Then, Druecke had a flash.

"I wanted to do something there," he said. "I decided to thoroughly transform the space."

What Druecke did, in fact, was christen the forlorn patch with a new identity by throwing a fete, an open-air happening complete with art, live music, wine, food and an elixir of eclectic personalities. Filmmakers met painters, and sculptors met performance artists.

Druecke's June event serves as an apt metaphor for what he and other emerging artists see when they look at Milwaukee: a city that, in some ways, doesn't look like much but can be radically altered by bringing artists and creativity and fun to it."

I confess I still think about that wonderful gesture today when I cross the Holton Street bridge, and I've come to believe that idiosyncratic, creative form of can-do spirit on the part of some of Milwaukee's more independent minded artists is one of our city's more defining assets.

To mark the 10th anniversary of that event, a group was formed last year, the Friends of Blue Dress Park, an organization that plans to explore other spots of seeming nothingness in the urban landscape in order to "cultivate value" in these marginal locales.

The group's inaugural event is Saturday, a picnic and brat tasting titled "Condiments Provided" from noon to 3 p.m. Where? Blue Dress Park, of course, at the southwest corner of Reservoir and Holton streets. Everyone's invited.

The group's board members include: Anna-Marie Opgenorth of Historic Milwaukee, Brian Reilly, of Municipal Land Use Center, John Riepenhoff of the Green Gallery, Karin Wolf arts administrator for the City of Madison, Sara Daleiden of s(o)ul, Steve Wetzel of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Wendy Slocum, a community representative.

About Mary Louise Schumacher

Mary Louise Schumacher is the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic. She writes about culture, design, the urban landscape and Milwaukee's creative community. Art City is her award-winning cultural page and a community of more than 20 contributing writers and artists. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

E-mail Newsletter

Keep up with the art scene and trends in urban design with art and architecture critic Mary Louise Schumacher. Every week, you'll get the latest reviews, musings on architecture and her picks for what to do on the weekends.